The Birth of a Rebel Without a Cause

Published exactly 60 years ago, July 15, 1951, “Catcher in the Rye” really stunned puritanical America.

The moral revolution wasn’t due to happen for another 10 years; Americans weren’t yet used to heroes challenging society’s norms. The book’s author, J.D. Salinger, was accused of urging youth to drink, praising debauchery, destroying family values and being blasphemous.

As it turned out, the critics had a basis for their concerns; the book’s main character, Holden Caulfield, became a model rebel for the next teenage generation. Kicked out of private school, Caulfield returns to his native New York, where he drifts around for a few days, spending time with people he meets along the way. He goes to night clubs and chats with tourists, nuns and a prostitute. He feels alienated from American society. The ever-present mass culture offends him, and the majority of the people he encounters are fake and lazy snobs. He is rebelling without any clear cause and without any goal, but it isn’t a destructive rebellion. Rather, his pervasive cynicism and the unbearable emptiness of life steer Caulfield toward plans to completely withdraw from society.

Although critics had a problem with Salinger’s novel, the “rebel without a cause” permanently wrote itself into the pop culture, becoming the inspiration of the film in which James Dean played the unforgettable title character.

A sudden tragic aspect of the novel was its influence on Mark D. Chapman, John Lennon’s murderer. Champman was morbidly fascinated by Salinger’s book. He carried the book with him on the day of the murder, and after killing Lennon he sat on the sidewalk and read it, waiting for the police to arrive.

J.D. Salinger, overwhelmed by the book’s popularity, went into hiding in a small town not long after the book’s publication, where he lived until his death last year. Not much is known about what he was doing before his death, except that he became fascinated first with Buddhism and then with Hinduism. He didn’t want to explain his work and, other than personal favors, never agreed to let himself be filmed.

“Catcher in the Rye” continues to fascinate readers. A quarter of a million copies are sold around the world each year.